A Sustainable College

As members of the Catholic Church we are called by Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si, which asks us to take ‘swift and unified global action’ in addressing environmental degradation and global warming. Our College Environment Captain and Environment Group, have put this call into action with the introduction of initiatives at the College to support sustainability and educate our community to become more environmentally conscious.

THE WORK OF OUR STUDENTS

The Environment Group has been very busy participating in many workshops, such as the making of beeswax wraps, no-sew t-shirts and bee hotels that will feature in the new veggie garden. These workshops aim to equip students with the skills to adopt more sustainable practices into their everyday lives.

To assist with this, I published a resource titled ‘A Student’s Guide to Sustainability’ that provides helpful tips that are achievable for students so they feel capable of being able to make positive change. The Environment Group helped to organise events for Clean Up Australia Day, which students from the Fiontar Group, ‘Active Adolescents’, enthusiastically participated in.

Along with this, the Fiontar students started germinating seeds in recycled egg cartons that will be planted in the new veggie garden.

THE STEM LAB RECYCLING STATION

At the end of last year, a recycling station was set up at the entrance of the College’s STEM Lab where students and staff are able to make ongoing donations of their recyclable materials to be used in STEM activities. Materials that can be donated include paper towel rolls, bits of foam, string, corks and old mechanical toys.

These are all saved from landfill or uncertain recycling processes, and put to good use in the innovative projects of our students. The station also collects bread tags for the organisation, ‘Aussie Bread Tags for Wheelchairs’.

These are taken to the Sussex Neighbourhood House where they are then transported to be processed and melted down into saleable items. The funds from these products such as seed pods and bowls, are used to fund wheelchairs for people in South Africa. We encourage all members of our community to continue contributing to the collections. COFFEE CUP RECYCLING

St Columba’s College have partnered with 7/11’s ‘Simply Cups’ coffee cup recycling program. As part of this, 7/11 have donated recycling stations to the College which have been placed outside the Canteen, Gayip Biik and in the Staffroom. Coffee and slurpee cups and lids, along with plastic straws can be placed in these stations.

These are then processed into useful items like road surfaces, traffic management devices and reusable coffee cups. The canteen also continues to accept clean keep cups in an effort to reduce the College’s waste production.

THE VISION FOR OUR SCHOOL VEGGIE GARDEN

The garden beds connecting the College’s learning courtyard to the canteen area are being transformed into a student designed and maintained garden. To kickstart the project, a student survey and Veggie Garden Design competition was released to capture the visions and creative ideas of students.

The front of the garden will feature native plants to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land. The rest of the garden will be a productive veggie garden featuring plant pots from the art department and a variety of pollinator-attracting flowers. It is hoped that the garden will be a produce source for the canteen, local food banks and/or fundraising initiatives. Adele Roeder, Environment Captain